The main characteristic of essential hypertension is the increase in peripheral vascular resistance to blood flow, located mostly in small arteries with a lumen diameter of 100 to 350 μm and in smaller arterioles, with diameters < 100 μm [1–3]. The increased peripheral resistance may be ascribed, in large part, to the consequences of structural (usually defined as vascular remodeling) and functional alterations in the resistance vasculature [1–3]. Most of the information available in human beings regarding the clinical and also prognostic role of microvascular structural alterations, in terms of onset and progression of hypertension-mediated organ damage, have been obtained with locally invasive techniques, namely by performing biopsies of subcutaneous fat and dissecting subcutaneous small resistance arteries [4,5].
